**I was approached by the author and given a digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.**
The Accidental Cannibal by Dale Rutter | 301 pages
| Self-published, June 2016 by the author | Fantasy, Historical Fiction, Supernatural
Summary:
Samuel is a cannibal by accident.
The year is 1071. William the Conqueror is King and the land is still ravaged after his conquest of England.
In a small dystopian village, a famine ensues. Some resort to cannibalism. It wasn't Samuel’s choice. Unbeknownst to him, his parents fed him human meat when he was younger. He doesn't blame them, times were hard but he now has an ongoing battle with his unwanted addiction to cannibalism. He is flawed.
However, he isn't a normal cannibal, it's changed him in ways he didn't know possible.
He acquires abilities from his cannibalism but at great sacrifice to himself.
Part of the abilities torment Samuel though, it questions whether the cannibalism is right. He considers quitting but it's not that easy. The urges are too overwhelming.
Too controlling.
Also, whilst hunting, he runs into a mysterious sinister stranger, a fellow ‘powered cannibal’ who complicates things beyond comprehension; Samuel wants to quit but what if he needs his abilities if things get ugly? When things get ugly. Will he even keep his abilities if he quit the cannibalism?
Together with his friend Lizzie; his rock and voice of reason, they must battle Samuel’s demons as well as the pompous stranger who has big dark plans for the world.
Lives will be lost and Samuel will unravel a world unimaginable to him including more ‘powered cannibals’ just like him but how far will he delve into the unknown world before it costs him and those around him? (courtesy of Goodreads)
My thoughts:
DNF at 10% (3 chapters) on July 16, 2016 | 1.5 stars
I hate that the first book of my ARC marathon is a DNF, but I can’t bring myself to continue.
First, I’ll start with the good stuff.
Premise: The idea for this novel is so compelling and different. A medieval cannibal? Sign me up! When my friend saw this and told me to look it up, I was excited to read it. When the author approached me with the offer of a copy for a review, I was flattered and really excited.
Initial set up: The very short prologue (which shouldn’t really be a prologue, just like a footnote-type thing) sets the stage for the novel (time period). It’s short, to the point, and doesn’t overload the reader with useless information. Great start to this.
Now for the not-so-good-stuff (I’m doing these in the order of the notes I made on my Kindle).
Punctuation & spelling: The first thing I noticed was the punctuation inaccuracies. There are commas missing all over and it makes reading difficult. Ellipses are overused and often used incorrectly for emphasis (four or five periods instead of three). I also noticed minor spelling errors throughout the few chapters I read. I’m not sure if my copy is unedited or something, but punctuation and grammatical problems are rampant.
Exposition & world building: Aside from the prologue, the exposition was incredibly strange. Small things are elaborated on, but then, where I felt there should or would be world building, there is none. Rutter describes doors and houses and frost on red hair, but nothing that’s crucial to the story.
Redundancies and repetitiveness: This takes up the bulk of the novel (up to chapter 4, anyway). There’s lots of lingering on the same sentence, only rearranged, characters answer each other by basically repeating what the character said. There are also lots of synonyms in single sentences: “frosty ice,” beckoned with his hand,” [He] won’t need to know...” “Okay, he won’t need to know,” things like that.
Characters in general: Characters have strange speech for the time. This is set in the 1070s and the author uses modern speech for the characters. If this is how it’s supposed to be, that’s fine. It reminds me of Ella Enchanted and A Knight’s Tale, but it’s off-putting and it takes me out of the story every time the characters talk to each other. A character refers to something as “weird,” and another time, one says “simmer down.” If this is historical fiction, I would expect it to read as historically accurate (within reason, of course). Another issue I have with the characters is that there is little distinction between the characters’ speech and the narrator. Lastly, these characters don’t give off emotion very well. I don’t feel bad for them, and the author doesn’t show any bond between them other than the surface expectations like marriage and offspring.
Wordiness, tense changes, and passive voice: W: Lots of the larger paragraphs are actually just long sentences. They’re overly wordy, explanatory, and just long in general. T: The author often changes tense during the novel, sometimes, even in the middle of sentences. I understand when a character is having a flashback that the tense changes, but moving from past tense to present frequently is exhausting and confusing for the reader. P: I know not a lot of people are aware of passive voice, and I know that it’s not technically a grammatical error, but it makes for confusing sentences. Passive voice is often used at the end of paragraphs (that’s passive, if you were wondering. “The author often uses passive voice at the end of his paragraphs,” is the active voice).
Arc build-up and drama for drama’s sake: So, I feel that the build-up to the Cannibal part is quick and lacks excitement. There’s no time for me, as a reader, to react to important plot points because they’re gone before they start. Also, the characters are overly dramatic for no clear reason. It doesn’t take much for the main character to basically choke himself out in terror (terror because of himself, might I add). It takes one time trying to kill someone to question his whole life. I would normally expect it to happen at least three times before he loses his mind.
How old is Samuel?: I don’t know. The first chapter is in 1071, the second in 1073, and the third, 1075. I’m never informed of Samuel’s age. He talks like an adult, but plays tag with (and tries to eat) his peers. I can’t properly relate to or feel for the main character if I don’t know anything about them.
So, I hate to have this be a negative review, but this novel seems unedited, at the very least. I would love to see this proofed and overhauled in the future because I’m genuinely intrigued by the idea, but the cons outweigh the pros at this point in time and, honestly, it’s hard to read at this point in time.
If this is ever edited and re-published, I’d love to know and give it another shot.
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